Posts Tagged ‘cameras’
Video: Filmmaker Rob Spence’s Implanted Bionic Camera Eyeball Is Up and Running
On his blog, which is endearingly named , Spence has posted a new twelve-minute video. He travels around the world, talking to those endowed with the cutting edge of cyborg-dom. Matter of fact, it's not too different from our recent feature, , except Spence investigates the specific real-life counterparts to the crazy-futuristic prostheses and cyborg parts featured in the new Deux Ex game. It's a pretty cool video, game plugs notwithstanding--any video that features a man saying "I am now filming your bionic hand...with my bionic eye" has a way of getting in our good graces. Check out the video below, though a warning that there are a few images that might not be kind to those with weak stomachs.
We'll keep you up to date on Eyeborg--his site teases that there will be more to come on the making of his prosthetic camera-eye in the coming days.
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Spy vs. Spy: Casinos Can’t See The Cameras Hidden Up Gamblers’ Sleeves
After a few hands, the cutter left the floor and entered a bathroom stall, where he most likely passed the camera to a confederate in an adjoining stall. The runner carried the camera to a gaming analyst in a nearby hotel room, where the analyst transferred the video to a computer, watching it in slow motion to determine the order of the cards. Not quite half an hour had passed since the cut. Baccarat play averages less than six cards a minute, so there were still at least 160 cards left to play through. Back at the table, other members of the gang were delaying the action, glancing at their cellphones and waiting for the analyst to send them the card order.
The gang had just walked away from Macau, the largest gambling city on Earth, with millions. They took $100,000 from the Bicycle casino in Los Angeles only weeks after the Las Vegas run. The Cutters’ scam did not require marking or switching cards, so casinos’ card scans and tracking software was irrelevant. Security consultants say that the gang numbers about 70. (With so many players, facial analytic software is easy to beat.)
Click here to launch a gallery of ways casinos catch cheats, and ways cheats beat the system.
At the Cosmopolitan, about 25 black-domed surveillance cameras hang from the ceiling above the high-stakes baccarat tables. Camera feeds, card scans, information about individual betting chips, and even biometrics about players are fed to a security suite at most new casinos, where software analyzes the data to determine betting outcomes in real time. a Cosmopolitan security official hovered a few feet behind the players, too, tracking wins, losses and betting patterns to identify cheats like the Cutters. Jeff Voyles, a hotel management instructor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, says that a new casino will spend at least $10 million on its surveillance.
Even so, casinos lose 6 to 8 percent of their revenue every year to some form of cheating, and sophisticated hustlers can take as much as $500,000 in just an hour. As cameras get better, smaller and cheaper, the cheaters are gaining an edge and casinos are struggling to keep up. “We’re really buried in tech and don’t know how to get out,” Voyles says, adding that because security systems don’t generate income, casinos are slow to update.
But that night at the Cosmopolitan, the house won. One of the Cutters slipped up, and security was alerted. Nevada Gaming Board agents were called in and shut down the game and detained the players. Still, they couldn’t find a camera. Bill Zender, a security contractor for high-end casinos, says that the agents didn’t find anything because they couldn’t get a warrant to search the gamblers. Video footage showed no illegal moves or suspicious behavior, and under Nevada law, the agents didn’t have probable cause to perform a full body search. The cutters were released.
In May, some of the Cutters were finally caught. A casino surveillance manager in the Philippines spotted a “spatula like” camera hidden up a baccarat player’s sleeve and he identified four more likely gang members nearby. meanwhile, casinos are considering installing counter-surveillance scanners that detect the low-frequency sound that video cameras emit.
Not four miles from the Cosmopolitan, you can buy such a scanner for $720 from Fox’s Spy Outlet. Manager Andrew Rowles will tell you that it has a range of only a few feet, and it might be picking up a cellphone, not a video camera. Rowles can also sell you a camera to beat the scanner. It’s hidden in a stick of gum and costs just $150.
Fireworks + Explodables + Ultra-High Speed Phantom HD Camera = The Best Fourth of July Video
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Not so much the celestial dazzling burst kind of fireworks -- you'll get plenty of those this weekend regardless -- but a serious investigation of what exactly happens when you stick firecrackers in, for instance, a jar of mayonnaise. The Phantom, which is typically used for everything from super slow-motion sports instant replays to manufacturing processes to military flight tests, captures it all in scintillating, elegant slow motion.
Stay tuned for our in-depth look at the workings of the Phantom camera and much more high-speed video in the coming weeks. But for now, let's explode some Jell-O. Happy Fourth of July!
Video edited by
And by popular demand, some unedited clips of our favorite explosions:
The Mayo Bomb
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Black Cat + Egg
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ISS Will Broadcast First Streaming HD Video of Earth
A Canadian company called UrtheCast (don’t ask us why it’s spelled this way) arranged a deal with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, to bring two cameras to the International Space Station sometime later this year, where they will be mounted on the exterior. The video will be downlinked to Earth and broadcast online.
One camera will shoot in high-definition, with a frame rate of 3.25 fps, and another will broadcast in lower resolution, offering a three-color image. It will provide the first high-definition continuous video footage of Earth, according to Scott Larson, co-founder and president of UrtheCast, in a promotional video.
The system will work as a sort of mashup between Google Earth and YouTube, Larson says, connecting live footage with maps and other capabilities. Users will be able to pause, rewind and zoom, and view specific times and locations — so long as the ISS was passing overhead at the time.
The camera is made by a UK firm and a Canadian company that worked on the shuttle’s robotic arm provided the software support. UrtheCast is based in Calgary.
UrtheCast hopes to launch the cameras later this year and start broadcasting by early 2012. Watch the dramatic trailer below.
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The Goods: June 2011′s Hottest Gadgets
Sprinklers that read your lawn's mind, 3-D phones, speakers that adjust the sound for your location and more
to see our favorite gadgets of the month.
How Darpa’s Tiny Robotic Hummingbird Hovers and Films
to discover how the hummingbird flies and rolls.
Finally, AeroVironment has a working prototype: the 6.5-inch-wingspan Nano Hummingbird. “It was never our intention to copy what nature has done; it’s just too daunting,” says Matt Keennon, the UAV’s head researcher. The camera-equipped bird beats its wings 20 times a second, whereas hummingbirds clock up to 80. Still, it can hover like the real thing, plus perform rolls and even backflips. Here’s how the bird flies.
WingsA skeleton of hollow carbon-fiber rods is wrapped in fiber mesh and coated in a polyvinyl fluoride film.
CameraThe camera angle is defined by the pitch of the Nano’s body. Forward motion gives the operator a view of the ground, aiding navigation. Hovering is good for surveying rooms.
Body It weighs 18.7 grams (less than an AA battery). The craft is remote-controlled, but an onboard computer corrects speed and pitch.
Video: A Built-In Eye Tracker Makes A Projection Screen You Can’t Look Away From
The pico projector is motorized, so as the camera tracks a player’s line of vision, the view of the gaming world shifts to follow their gaze. It does not require them to hold anything, or have anything attached to them. The students have tested the system with a first-person shooter game, which this system seems perfectly suited for, as well as a flight simulator where the player controls the pitch and roll of an aircraft by moving their head.
In this early stage of development, players have to sit precisely in front of the eye tracker in order for it to work. Not to mention the display looks a little meager at this point. However, with time and a little work, this system could allow for the next generation of Kinect-like gaming to be even more immersive.
[PicoProjectorInfo via Engadget]